SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors once defined an NBA era without parity. No matter what the standings said, the truth was that the Warriors were the league’s top team, and everyone else was playing for second place.
Those days are over. Today, the Warriors are in the thick of a Western Conference where the difference between the No. 3 seed and missing the playoffs is a paltry three wins.
Amid these tight margins, there’s a sense of anticipation around the defending champions. The Warriors’ season has been a slog, but there’s a pervasive notion that the Dubs’ best basketball could arrive at any moment; that the team’s omnipresent .500 record is merely a prelude.
But is it?
At what point is the evidence of this season enough to inform the remainder of it?
If these Warriors are inevitable, how long can the team wait before putting its true form on display?
Going into Saturday’s game with the Mavericks, the Warriors have 30 games remaining in the regular season.
Any time they want to get around to playing that better brand of basketball, I’m sure it will be well received.
“I think we’ve seen spurts of really good play,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told me. “We just haven’t been able to put it all together.”
We know the Warriors can play better than they have in the last two games. Their loss to the Timberwolves on Wednesday — in which they blew a 14-point fourth-quarter lead — was deemed “unforgivable” by Kerr in a 95.7 The Game radio interview.
That loss was followed a night later by a ran-out-of-gas performance in Denver.
Competition in the NBA is tough enough. The schedule will give you losses, like when it demands you cap a road trip with a game at altitude on the second end of a back-to-back.
But the grind of the Association is even tougher when you’re beating yourself, and that’s the only consistent thing the Warriors have done this season.
In a season that has been defined by close games, Golden State seems to find more ways to lose those contests than win them.
“We’ve had, probably, close to 10 games that were right there for the taking. Usually, in a season, I think you have a few games that you win that you shouldn’t, a few that you lose and you shouldn’t,” Kerr said. “To me, that ratio seems way off this year. It feels like we’ve won two or three games we shouldn’t, but lost eight or nine — maybe 10 — that we should [win]. If you just took five of those, where we close the game the way we should close the game, we’re the two or three seed.
It’s that margin of error that’s costing us over and over. It’s a slim margin, and we’re just not getting over the hump.”
This is a team that consistently finds equilibrium in the standings. At 14 different points this season, the team’s record featured as many wins as losses. Two games, 20, and 40 games into the season, the Warriors were .500. With 30 games to play, they’re back at even.
The talent on this team suggests this should be its floor — that they are due to go on a run that puts .500 behind them, once and for all.
The truth is that talent is only part of the winning equation.
There are no guarantees that they can’t fall below the mark.
The Warriors might be one of the better offensive teams in the NBA — fourth in effective field-goal percentage and playing at the fastest pace — but they also allow the second-most points off turnovers and have the second-worst turnover percentage.
For everything this team does well, there’s a point of struggle.
The Warriors played a similar game in 2020-2021. That season was 72 games, but the Warriors were a .500 team through 66 contests.
Those Warriors made a push in the final six games of their season. Kerr went to an eight-man rotation: Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Andrew Wiggins, Kevon Looney, and Kent Bazemore in the starting lineup; Juan Toscano Anderson, Mychal Mulder, and Jordan Poole coming off the bench.
Against a weak schedule, the Dubs won their final six games. But they were gassed by the time they reached the play-in tournament.
It’s not a formula for success, especially two years later.
“I think it’s similar to two years ago, minus coming off a championship,” Curry said. “So you’re still like in that in-between…. [I’m] Very optimistic that we can turn it around, but we have to address certain issues with our team, like whether it’s performance issues or whether it’s just trying to find the right combinations. Whatever it is, it’s gonna get us in a place where we can string wins together and prove to ourselves.”
“I don’t care what anybody else is saying about our team,” Curry said. “[It’s about proving] to ourselves that we have what it takes to compete for championships — anything else is not to our standard. It’s hard to do, [but] it’s why we’re regarded as the team that we are because we’ve been at that level year after year.”
The Warriors repeatedly said last season that the 2020-21 team’s late push informed last season’s title run.
What is last year’s title run to this season’s team?
At this point, it’s been nothing but a reason to rest on laurels.
Last season’s Warriors started strong but limped into the postseason. Then they won the title. That poor form meant nothing.
Well, the Warriors have plenty of poor form to match last season. They lack that great run, though.
And until they make it — until they “get over the hump” or “put it all together” — it’s ridiculous to consider that this season will end with a title, too.
They know it, too. Said Curry: “We have to embrace that challenge.”
